In Britain TMobile and the operator 3 already do

The competitors of yesterday may well make common cause. This is possible in mobile telephony and it is perfectly legal. Vodafone and Telefonica, two of the behemoths of the industry in Europe, have decided to share parts of their mobile phone networks in four countries in which they are present: the Germany, the Spain, Great Britain, and the Ireland. Discussions to share infrastructure in Czech Republic are underway.

In practical terms, the offers of the two operators will remain separate, but new sites allowing mobile devices will be built in two and already existing sites will be pooled. In short, this "Vodafonica" will only concern the infrastructure. Neither the British nor Spanish amount precisely the savings they expect from this sharing. Just merely say that they in hope "of the hundreds of millions of books during the" next 10 years. A financial analyst may however to quantify the savings between 500 and 600 million euros for each operator. For information, in the three largest countries covered by the agreement Germany, Great Britain and Spain , Vodafone has invested approximately 1.5 billion in infrastructure in its fiscal year 2007-2008. In a study, the firm Oliver Wyman believes that the cost of a 2 G and those of a 3 G network network can be respectively reduced by a third and a quarter. On average, a mobile operator invests from 12 to 13 of its turnover in its infrastructure. But with the crisis and the pressure on their turnover, the major mobile players are now ready to share their networks to maintain their margins. In Britain, T-Mobile and the operator 3 already do.

Significant economies

For OEMs, already hit hard by the crisis, the development of such agreements is a priori not good news. Indeed, in financial markets on the rise yesterday, Ericsson, Vodafone and Telefonica provider action lost 1.17 to 76.5 kronor on the Stockholm Stock Exchange. The first manufacturer of equipment for mobile telephony in the world admit: "networks sharing potentially brings significant savings for operators." But, if Swedish, as its competitors, has developed a specific offer to help operators to share their infrastructure, because it considers that, in the term, these agreements are neutral for him. "The majority of the savings comes from the pooling of local rather than equipment since the network needs to be sized to meet peak traffic of each operator", says the group in its annual report.

The sharing of networks is also not the only way that found the operators to reduce their costs. Last week, Orange, for example, entrusted to the OEM Nokia Siemens Network management of its mobile network revel. Then T-Mobile and 3, still on this side of the channel, have been stone two shots. If they have developed their infrastructure in common, they have also outsourced the management of their network to Ericsson. There, both Alcatel-Lucent, Ericsson, Nokia Siemens have large ambitions in the area, hoping that, in this area, they will be able to stand in the way their Chinese competitors.